1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is a system and related algorithm that processes any electronic text onto a Cartesian coordinate system to analyze the underlying attitudinal mindset of that text through multivariate processing; displays the analysis demographically, geographically, and metrically; and articulates the results into a representative analytical report.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the early 1990's the present inventor, a workers' compensation consultant working for employers to reduce the magnitude of workplace injuries, having written a 350-page self-published book in 1993 on workers' compensation program management, used it as the primary text for his 30-hour course. For the most part, the process emphasized traditional safety compliance and risk management controls (such as safety committees, transitional work, and addressing injuries of the greatest expense/pain and suffering). In 1995, in looking to expand the process further, in a 1,400-hr. study of “what makes safe companies safe”, the inventor consciously recognized what he had always intuitively known, that a disgruntled employee is far more likely to get hurt. FIG. 1 is a revised version of the 1997 schematic of an unpublished article developed by the inventor to represent the relationship between worker attitudes and outcomes.
After seeking to blend the left (institutional) and right (cultural) sides of the schematic, the inventor recognized the incompatibility of such a combined result. In seeking to understand the process further, the inventor discovered a unique relationship between stress, frustration, unrealistic expectations, and lack of control over one's situation. The process was described in an unpublished article in 1999. FIG. 2 reflects an elementary 2×2 matrix. In essence, the matrix represents two opposite pairs of situational attitudes of satisfaction (stuff that makes you feel good) and frustration (stuff that makes you feel lousy), and, similarly, challenge and acceptance. The right side reflects expectation that the situation should be different and the left side reflects expectation that the situation should remain the same. Similarly, the top half reflects lack of perceived control and the bottom reflects perceived control over the situation.
Thereafter, the inventor, in seeking to apply the concept to the workplace, used the process as a tool to better understand emotional stress and frustration in improving workers' compensation programs and employee turnover, from a cultural aspect. In this approach, the inventor expanded the 4×4 matrix to a 6×6 matrix that employed relatable phrases (within each cell) that associated a person's situational attitudes and transferred those selections back to the 6×6 map to enhance dialogue. It was neither purposeful to expand the matrix in greater detail than 6×6 nor to automate the process.
The initial process complements the well-established Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI). As such, MBTI recognizes personalities, which can be described as one's identity regardless of the situation. In other words, although the situation changes, one's personality doesn't change very much, which begs the question: what is one's identity when the situation does change? To the inventor's knowledge, this psychosocial process is the best layperson's answer to that question. As such, both processes are ultimately interested in psychosocial identity.
In 2002, the inventor copyrighted a 193-page book titled The Frustration Matrix Guide, detailing the process of the psychosocial piece of the analysis described above. Included was a series of anecdotal experiences to provide familiarity and relatability to the psychosocial process. The entire content of that book is incorporated herein by reference.
In 2003, the inventor recognized that, beyond psychosocial messaging, abstract linguistic words also conformed to the matrix, whether or not directly associated with psychosocial tendencies. The linguistic referencing evolved into attitudinal, psychosocial, human expression and, most recently, subjective terminology. In this document, the four terms are used interchangeably.
Although this inventor was not aware of prior technology in the course of writing the book identified above, Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum, in their 1957 book, The Measurement of Meaning, (1) measured distances within bipolar adjectives based on an analogue technique. In this approach, they distinguished intensities (although generally, only a sampling) of 78 bipolar adjectives along each continuum. (This inventor mapped 16,000 subjective words/phrases, adding nouns, verbs, adverbs, and the remainder of almost all adjectives.) The terms “subjective”, “psychosocial”, and “attitudinal” may be used throughout here as interchangeable equivalents. Although Osgood et al. described radial distance; they did not describe a process for constructing lateral measurement between the radians. Furthermore, the present invention, in not only exercising independent variable mapping, also employs a digital approach. As such, in absence of a subconscious mindset architecture/derivative, Osgood's reference to subconscious mindset origin is lacking.
Later, Hardy, in his “Verbal-Visual Framework Method” US published patent application Pub. No. US 2006/0110715 A1 of May 25, 2006, proposed a marketing application employing, for the most part, Osgood's analog mapping process.
Linguistic Analysis Continuum
In order to understand this technology, it is instructive to review the recent history of automated Linguistic Analysis, ranging from Text Analysis through Sentiment/Opinion Analysis, to the current Subjective Linguistic Analysis. FIG. 3 compares and contrasts these three technologies. In the mid 1990's, Text Analysis emerged as a form of Linguistic Analysis that reviewed texts for a wide variety of objective factors, such as content, data, information, and knowledge. Currently, there are scores of analytic techniques, including statistics, that perform many different types of analyses, the most familiar being data mining.
With the aid of Artificial Intelligence (A/I), Natural Language Processing (NLP) facilitated marked improvement in the automated analysis of language, primarily by clarifying ambiguity of meaning based on the context of usage within the text.
As a result, Sentiment Analysis (SA) and Opinion Analysis (OA) (which are often referred to synonymously) seek to determine an attitude relative to a particular subject or issue. This process emerged in 2005. SA incorporates NLP, computational analysis, and statistics and seeks to determine an attitude along a particular one-dimensional continuum, such as from favorability through unfavorability, for the particular issue under review. OA involves opinion-oriented informational analysis. Although the stated objective of both processes is to determine the attitude of a speaker/writer with respect to a particular topic, they employ highly directed solutions for specific applications.
As useful a departure from analysis of strictly objective linguistics as SA and OA are, they do not simultaneously accommodate multiple subjective continua (e. g., desirability (undesirable through desirable) and also affiliation (collaborative through competitive)). In other words, if tasked to analyze both desirability and affiliation in the same application, SA/OA are unable to do so because of their one-dimensional aspect. As a result, although SA (primarily) and OA (secondarily) address subjective linguistics, their one-dimensional referencing restricts their ability to simultaneously embrace every subjective word. Given this limitation, and recognizing the positive step beyond purely objective Text Analysis, if by definition, the present invention of Subjective Linguistic Analysis excludes every objective word, includes every subjective word, and embraces two-dimensional continua, SA and OA, which are unable to qualify for those criteria, fall into a mid-range, or hybrid subjective category.
A parallel approach to the proposed technology is to distinguish sentences, as a whole, as either objective or subjective. Given the lack of two-dimensional mapping, it is constrained to remain within polarity. Removing objective sentences in order to improve the polarity is a viable approach, that is, of course, if one is willing to discard all included subjective word messaging when discarding the entire objective sentence.
Again, the concept of restricting the author's frame of mind to entire sentences is consistent with the notion as presented in this proposed technology of segregating objective words from subjective words. However, the platform of an entire sentence often includes multiple subjective messages. Moreover, lacking a two-dimensional template constrains the analysis to polarity continua of single category referencing.
The proposed technology neither restricts the insight to entire sentences nor is it constrained to polarity continua. As such, while the composite sentence approach is important within Phase II Linguistic Analysis, it prohibits entry into Phase III.
The Decomposition Process.
When one hears the subjective word, delicious, subconsciously, three criteria register: the attitudinal orientation of desirability, the magnitude of highly desirable, and the reference category of taste. (The present invention decomposes attitudinal/subjective words into a reference category, magnitude, and orientation of attitude, which is reflected in FIG. 4 and described herein.) Or, if viewed in reverse, the most appropriate words that satisfy the criteria of taste, desirability, and to a high degree, are very similar: delicious, succulent, tasty, and delectable. The possibility of distasteful, while a member of the reference category of taste, is highly undesirable. Similarly, while beautiful is highly desirable, it belongs to a different reference category of appearance. Interestingly, beautiful and delicious are attitudinally equivalent in that they both elicit high desirability, even though they belong to different reference categories.
An unsettling realization of equivalent attitudes is that of mathematical mapping (digitization) whereby, because subjective meaning is ingrained within the combination of equivalent attitude and reference category, the outward message, and, therefore, aspect of meaning, has become transcended.
Decomposition of Subjective Words into Reference Category and Attitudinal Equivalents.
Many approaches to Linguistic Analysis have grouped subsets of subjective lemmas (basic words) and positioned them along a linear continuum, such as from desirability through undesirability, happiness through sadness, and strength through weakness. To varying degrees, these efforts have not exhausted identifying every reference category, and, especially, every subjective lemma within the reference category. Moreover, none have been referenced on a two-dimensional template such that every lemma is portrayed within a reference category and that every reference category is presented relative to every other reference category. Finally, no other representation has associated every subjective/attitudinal word in reference to the continua of a pair of independent variables.
In the case of Suci et al., 78 categories were listed and contained representative (although not exhaustive) membership of all words in a particular reference category. The present invention considers that many categories and more such that there may be 250 or more categories or some other number provided that all 16,000 subjective lemmas listed in common usage in the American language are included in a reference category and may be in more than one reference category.
The present invention considers the categorization of words and their associated lemmas. FIG. 5 described herein is a display of the reference category of taste where 41 lemmas within the reference category are shown in a scattered alignment loosely ranging from strong desirability (ambrosial) to strong undesirability (unpalatable). Moreover, they also conform to the independent variables of expectation of change (horizontally) and perception of control (vertically). For example, in the case of unpalatable, one would strongly expect that the situation should be different (if one were to continue eating) and the present situation would indicate that the person lacked perceived control to have provided desirable taste. It is to be understood that other categories exist for other groups of words and the “taste” reference category is one example. Appearance and quality are two other examples of word categories.
What is needed is a better mechanism for mapping attitudes from texts and, especially, a mechanism that processes and interprets all subjective words for the underlying frame of mind.